I'm Insane, But You're the Same
by L0V3Z
Summary: A laugh ripped through the eerily quite insane asylum and Joker almost rolled his eyes out of reflex. Peering out of his cell and through the metal bars, he saw the only person who was capable of making such a sound. Said woman was currently walking down the hall in her orange jumpsuit with a prison guard by her side.


White.

White was all he saw for majority of his days in this forsaken place. White walls, white sheets, and white lab coats. How drab this place was compared to his usual life in the fast paced crime city of Gotham. If he didn't need time sensitive information from someone in this facility, he would never have allowed himself to get captured. He sneered from the memory of being "caught" by Batman and the smug looks on the policemen's face when they finally loaded him into the reinforced steel van with handcuffs around his wrists. It had been part of the plan, but it still wasn't palpable for him to be carted off to the loony bin...again.

He'd been here two days and already there have been a dozen psychologists interviewing him, trying to get into his mind. He scoffed in their faces and instead proceeded to mess around with them instead. Not one person exited the interrogation rooms without being severely damaged by the clown's disturbing words and mental assessments. Psychologists were never as good at their job as they thought they were. It was so easy for him to play mind tricks and sap every ounce of reason from their tiny brains.

Regardless of that fun, it got boring after the fifth one. Now he just wanted to find the man he was looking for and get Frost to bust him the hell out.

The member of the Suicide Squad. That was who he was looking for. The up and coming mercenary crew had gotten famous over the last years and he needed their specific expertise for a problem that he had been having with another gang that was cutting into his area. Many of the other mercenaries he had sent had came back in body bags, and save for going by himself to deal with the gang, he was running out of options and the Suicide Squad was known to take on the most impossible of tasks.

Normally, Joker had connections that could hunt down the elusive team, but it was well known that they hid their tracks to the point of practical invisibility. The only way to contact them was through word of mouth from others who already knew of them.

It was just his luck when he had gotten word from one of his informants that one of the team mates had been captured a couple weeks ago and had been taken to Arkham. He didn't want to personally get shut inside of this damn cell but he was the best candidate to get into the prison, after all he already knew the place. And as an added bonus, the facility always wanted him back.

He growled lowly. But he was so bored.

A laugh ripped through the eerily quite insane asylum and Joker almost rolled his eyes out of reflex. Peering out of his cell and through the metal bars, he saw the only person who was capable of making such a sound. Said woman was currently walking down the hall in her orange jumpsuit with a prison guard by her side. There were hand cuffs on her hand and feet connected together by the chain around her waist. Whenever the dangerous patients would come out, they always had them in chains.

Regardless of the dreary atmosphere or the dead panned guard by her side, the woman continued to talk and laugh at her own jokes. As far as he knew, she never stayed quiet for more than a couple of minutes at a time. The first day he was here, she had yelled through the bars of their cells to introduce herself as Harley. He didn't bother to introduce himself since it was clear than the woman already knew who he was. All of Gotham knew who he was.

With her cotton candy, blue and pink hair and wide smile, she stood out from the other inmates. While most coward away from the intimidating guards, she would treat them almost like friends. She was either fearless or completely mad. And he was leaning towards the latter.

When the woman saw him staring from his position on his cot, she stopped in her tracks and gave as big of a wave as her hand cuffs would let her. The guard who had already opened the door to her cell gave her a push on the back when she didn't move from staring at him for a while. She didn't look surprised when the guard took hold of her arm and nearly dragged her into the cell. Instead her eyes shifted from Joker to the guard and her body moved so that she was face to face with taller man. Effortlessly, Harley shook off the man's hand and jumped up to head butt his nose.

A strangled groan escaped the guard as blood gushed from his nose. "Why you!" Joker heard the guard start, but before he could lung at Harley, she had already hobbled her way into her cell and had kicked the bars closed.

One hand on his bleeding nose and the other gripping the bars of Harley's cell, the guard seethed, but Harley just watched him with disinterest. "You know I don't like to be manhandled, Cole," she addressed him by name.

"Bitch!" The guard finally let go of his nose in favour of splitting the bloodied spit on the ground near Harley's feet. "You think you're so clever, but you've just locked yourself in with chains still around your arms. How you going to get loose without these?" He lifted his key ring so they dangled near her face.

Regardless of Harley being only a foot away from the bars, Cole didn't try to grab onto her jumper and pull her closer to cuss her out. The last guard to have done that had gotten his man-sac nearly crushed by the woman when she had also reached around and grabbed onto them.

"You can sleep in those for the night." Cole said before turning away from her cell muttering.

Joker's eyes watched as Harley didn't move until the metal door at the far end of the hall closed signalling that the guard had exited the prison block.

"Ugh! And I was having such a great day until that happened!" she fumed and then proceed to hop towards her bed instead of taking small steps in the chains. The metal chimed loudly as she did so and half the inmates in the block groaned and shouted profanities at her. When she reached her bed, she replied with a cheerful, "Sorry!"

Her bound hands moved underneath the mattress and into the slit that he knew was cut into the bottom of the thin mattress. He knew because he had a similar compartment cut into his mattress since it was too obvious to have contraband just shoved under the bed.

She pulled something out and with a cheer went about jamming it into her cuffs. From the glint of the object, Joker knew that it was probably some bent piece of metal that she had grabbed from the courtyard. Regardless of their being a ban on any sharp objects, inmates always found a way to have make-shift weapons.

He watched her fiddle with the locks for a minute before a triumphant laugh escaped her when the cuffs around her arms gave way and landed on the floor with a clatter. She again repeated the lock-picking with the ones on her feet and again smiled like a fool when they too separated from her body. Replacing the metal under her mattress, Harley stood and stretched her body out. She then reached down and took hold of the chains before standing on her bed and hooking them to the bars that lined the top of her cell. No doubt she was going to use them as monkey bars until the guards came to take them down. She had once hung her jumpsuit and began to use it as a hammock of sorts.

This was what fascinated him about her. She acted like an idiot most of the time but when it came down to it, he knew that just like him if she really wanted to she could bust out of this place. She knew how to fight if the courtyard fights that she had been in before said anything. She was smart enough to get herself out of trouble and it seemed crazy enough to even attempt a break out. Which begged the question, why was she still in here?

As he contemplated the question, he didn't realize that he was stilling staring at her intently until her eyes locked on his and her cherry red lips split into an open smile. He had been caught staring and oddly enough actually felt sheepish about it, but he was not one to shy away from confrontation so he continued to stare at her intently.

"Hi ya, Puddin'," her voice floated across the concrete floors that separated them.

Puddin'. Not pudding, but puddin'. That was what she always called him and he hadn't the faintest idea why. He never bothered to respond to her and instead would always narrow his eyes at her. Though, his harsh expressions never seemed to bother her and she always waved or chatted vividly even when he stayed silent.

In the limited time that he had known her, he knew her favourite colour and apparently who her first kiss was back in middle school; all information that she had given up willingly. They were things that he didn't care to know but for some reason had clung to his brain. Perhaps, it was the loud, annoying voice she had that made what ever she said stick to him.

He really needed to find the man he was looking for and get out of here. He didn't know how much more of this woman he could handle.

As she proceeded to tell him about her day in an animated fashion, he closed his eyes and banged the back of his head against the concrete wall. He didn't think he could handle very much at all.


End file.
